Moonshot No Hoax. Duh

n9avg writes "Put aside those absurd claims the Apollo moon landings were a hoax. Two scientists pouring over photos taken by a lunar orbiting spacecraft have eyed evidence for a touchdown. New research led by Misha Kreslavsky, a space scientist in the department of geological sciences at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, has found anomalies in the moon's surface in the vicinity of the Apollo 15 landing site. Check out the picture! http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/apol lo15_touchdown_photos_010427.html"

Comments

Satellite photos would logically be a hoax.

[Christopher Thomas]

Stating the obvious, but:

If there were a conspiracy to fake the moon landings, then this conspiracy would of *course* extend to faking photographs from Clementine or any other probe allegedly sent to the moon.

This would be far more effort than it's worth, but so would faking the moon landings.

Great start today

[bryan1945]

Wonderful, 1 real post and 9 posts by some guy with a fecal fetish...

Anyway, the problem about the whole moon landing "hoax" is that those people who believe in the hoax will not be satisfied until you actually take them to the moon. Even then, I'm sure that they will try to figure out a way that we faked even their own trip! Without really knowing, I would guess these people have about zero scientific knowledge, and therefore have decided that there is no way we could get to the moon, despite the relatively simple Newtonian mechanics behind the whole thing.

"Behold the power of cheese." :)

How to Fake a Lunar Landing

[s20451]

For the interest of Slashdot readers, national governments, and any other interested organization, I am posting instructions on how to fake a moon landing and not get caught for 30 years.

Before the Landing

• Put out a request for tenders for a contract to build the lunar hardware to major aerospace companies. It would be pretty obvious after the fact that no one had built your launchers and landers.
• In the contracts, give a specification that would lead the 10,000 engineers who work on the project to reasonably believe that the equipment could be used to land on the moon. Engineers are smart people; they could easily spot holes in your assumptions if you make the requirements less stringent than they have to be. If it were obvious that the hardware couldn't land on the moon, you would be caught.
• Have the hardward manufactured and delivered. Again easy to spot if this wasn't done, especially for a Saturn V-class rocket and related assemblies.
• In summary: You would actually have to build stuff that would probably be able to land a man on the moon, with all the associated expenses.

During the missions:

• You will actually have to launch the thing you contracted to build. You could launch something else -- but why bother? We've already established that you have to build a moon rocket, and you'd have to pay off everyone who was involved in its destruction and substitution. Besides, it would be big news, so news organizations would want to film the launch of the big rocket.
• So, the capsule could be suborbital, or stay in orbit, and the rest of the mission could be faked, right? Wrong. Antennas around the world will be tracking the radio signals from the capsule, including the continuous telemetry feeds. Something would have to go to the moon, on a realistic lunar trajectory, or this would be immediately spotted by legions of radio astronomers and HAM radio amateurs around the world, many of whom have advanced signal processing available to them (like Doppler analysis, etc.). They would also be able to tell the difference between a lunar trajectory and a different orbit, like a geosynchronous orbit, because of the moon's particular position in the sky.
• So, the capsule has to go to the moon. Does it have to orbit? Yes. The capsule must stay in the vicinity of the moon for several days (again checked by those with large radio antennas). The only foolproof way to do that is to orbit.
• So, the capsule has to orbit. Does it have to land? Yes. While in orbit, the capsule can't communicate with Earth from the far side of the moon. Yet a lander must be able to send continuous telemetry to the Earth. It would be pretty obvious fakery to have the "lander"'s telemetry fade out at the same time as the capsule's.
• Does it have to come back? Yes; for the same trajectory reason. The return trajectory could be tracked.
• Does the capsule/lander have to be manned? Not necessarily, but there would be many complications if it weren't. You would have to be able to carry on ground/capsule communications in a realistic manner even though the communications from the capsule would have to be recorded and beamed back (because your radio is being monitored). The "astronauts" would be unable to perform any diagnostic tasks aboard the spacecraft (because they're not aboard it), so the entire flight control team would have to be in on the hoax (dozens, even hundreds, of people to pay off).
• In summary: You would have to actually send something to the moon, which may as well be manned.

After the Landing

• Bring back tons of "moon rocks" and other materials for analysis by independent scientists around the world. These rocks could not be obviously of terrestrial origin, implying some exotic materials science (or creative geology). Either that or pay off anyone who comes in contact with the "lunar samples".

And if you're NASA - do this seven times, with one of the seven attempts turning into a remarkably realistic failure.

The upshot: It's equally easy and expensive to actually land a man on the moon than fake it convincingly. Furthermore, the evidence for fakery would not be found in trivial forms of evidence, like photographs, but in more obvious places, like contracts, accounting, radio monitoring, and the lunar samples themselves.